Question: have I reached the point of considered wisdom, or of
new and previously unthinkable stupidity?

Answer: I've stopped worrying about it.

Transmogrifications, journeys in the rain, aches in the back,
and unknown voices in the mail. Client, server, hosting,
been there, done that, if things are looking good, that
means only that you're not digging deeply enough. More, worse,
nastier. Use it until it breaks, frustrate yourself.
Dogfooding is like life, is like an addiction. The first step is
admitting that there is a problem.

What you have to say, say. I'll trade off Dial-a-Shrink-ing any time,
but it's not in my contract to read minds, I'm not in the
business of performing psychic root canal. Existence is antecedent
to reflection. I'm a phenomena-first kind of guy these days; no putting the
noumena before the horse for me.

There are doppelgangers about, one might think, trippel- and quadruppel-gangers,
even, but take it at this: any resemblance to any characters, living or
dead, actual or fictional, is not purely coincidental, is not fully accidental,
any more than one can say that life's resemblance to itself is pure
happenstance. There are patterns sometimes, they swirl and they congeal,
there are echoes and resonances, and when you mean to say one thing
it has overtones of infinitude, you can't talk without waking the neighbors.

Crossing the bridge now, heading for the back hills. This is the season
of orange and black, I know, but it's better to be seeing them now
than not. Keep going now, energy for later, the key is never how hard
to push up the hard slope of things, no, it's gathered together in that
moment just past the peak when things open up again. Do you have a bit
of the headlong in you, for when you need it?

It's my party and I'll grin if I want to. Here's a tip, though:
a little chili pepper in the cider, just a little. Measure your
priorities by the number of chairs involved. And let things be
what they are. It's a crazy dance, there are certain things
that must be understood without ever being implied, and if they
aren't even understood, then this is perhaps even better.

There are certain carefully-modulated positions involved,
there are subtleties of meaning and shades about which it
pays to be precise. Sanity lies in taking your reason this
far, and no further. The brain partitions itself, rewrites history,
chooses, perhaps, not to think things through. The art consists
in the order in which one tackles the antionomies. Pick-up sticks.

From the top, once more with feeling, and maybe a little
wah-wah this time.

Crossed wires, it's a strange balance, but it's working well enough.
I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay, work all night and play all day.
Pull out the zoom, inches at a time, slow pan back, rotate to the left
and point that camera into the future. Music to set the scene,
food for micromanagement.

While the glass is full, we drink up, drink up. If God wanted
us sober, he'd knock the glass over, so while it is full we drink up,
drink up.